I think I understand Harry’s motivation

Delen

As a child, you want to do things different than your own parents did. Not always. It looks like prince Harry is trying to do his best to prevent that things will continue as they are. You know what, I think I understand Harry’s motivation to break away from the British royal family. It seems as if he learned from the past.

Let’s go back to 31 august 1997. I still remember the extra television broadcasts about the death of Harry’s mother, Diana Spencer. Even now, there is a lot of discussion if the car was tampered with or not. I’m not diving into that pool. I want to focus on what happened. The car where she and Dodi Fayed were riding in was chased by paparazzi. No, I’m not claiming they killed the couple. They did, however, anything for their stories.
When news came out that Harry was marrying Meghan Markle, ‘just’ a citizen (even though she was an actress), it seemed like a field day for the press. Not everything that was published was based on true events. Yes, some relatives of Meghan were interviewed and these stories weren’t always in favour of her. Just like before, a certain part of the press did the same thing as when Harry’s mother was still alive.
For a great part of his life, Harry has grown up without a mother. This is a moving event. It marked his life. This mark will never go away. He probably learned the way the press – or a certain kind of journalists – did things that weren’t that nice. With nice I mean: they just wrote trash. Over and over again. It seems that he didn’t want to make the same mistakes or prevent things from escalating. Especially when his son was born.
The decision to step back was referred to as a Megxit. As if she, the outsider, was the one that caused all of this. It seems that she was the intruder who lured away from the prince. No one really talks about all the negativity that was published.
When you don’t want things to escalate, you take measures. It looks like Harry and Meghan have just done that. For Harry, it wasn’t the easiest thing to do. He was raised as a prince. Meghan was ‘just’ the actress.
Yes, even without the marriage between them, the press would probably have written a lot about Meghan as an actress. At some point, there was this marriage and the birth of their first child. Is that different? Yes, simply because a prince doesn’t always have the means to protect himself from these writings.
It’s not about treason or even high treason. It all seems that Harry did something I would probably have done too. That’s to protect those who you truly love: his wife, his son. I think this is just preservation and there is nothing wrong with that.
I wish more would see it this way, instead of bashing on and on.
Image source: Wikimedia (Flickr)